provoking, funny and more than a little bit freaky

October 14, 2023 10:52 AM

"A literary journal? Well I guess so..." Going Down Swinging is one of Australia’s longest-running and most respected literary journals: publishing digital as well as print and audio anthologies since 1979. For all of their past editions in one place and freely accessible to readers, visit their digital archives.

Issue #25 (2007) "was a stand-out issue of Going Down Swinging. No book this time, but a double-CD spoken word edition", featuring 25 pieces from Australia and 20 international pieces. Highlights include a drunken epic of tooth extraction, an otherwise unreleased track from a Meanwhile, Back in Communist Russia... successor band, a and knife-sharpening as a metaphor.

More highlights:
Clippings by Zac Picker and illustrated by tenderhooks, about adjusting people's TV antennae
Impromptu by Coco Huang, about fraud in classical music
The Lovers by Rory Green, an interactive digital field of gravestones
All the Best by Morgan-Lee Snell, about tone policing
watching people hearing people breathe by Hasib Hourani, with recipes to share

The Going Down Swinging team works on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, whose sovereignty has never been ceded. Our writers and artists work on stolen lands across all of so-called Australia. We acknowledge and pay our deepest respects to all Elders, past and present.

This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice (1 comment total)

Delightful, thank you!
And I'll post what may be the best American journal equivalent: In the Library With the Lead Pipe.
posted by indexy at 6:14 PM on October 14, 2023 [2 favorites]